Changes on the way for Army of Two sequel

Although I didn’t address it in my review, I’ll say it now: I never bought into the Resident Evil 5black zombie controversy. The whole hullabaloo over killing black zombies seemed manufactured. I didn’t find it racist. I didn’t find it offensive. It was part of a story that takes place in west Africa. The alternative — white zombies in that part of the world — just wouldn’t make sense given the game’s setting.

Despite all that, the whole Resident Evil 5 episode did remind me of one racial qualm I had. It came last year when I played through Army of Two. There’s a level — arguably the best one in the game — when the Abu Sayyaf take over an aircraft carrier off the Philippine coast and Rios and Salem are battling on top of it as it sink.

This is the only time I’ve ever killed my own people in a video game, and at first, I was struck by the novelty of it. Then, I thought in real life this would never happen. Abu Sayyaf isn’t sophisticated enough to capture an aircraft carrier let alone captain it and fly planes off the runway. It seemed outlandish, but then again, this was a game about two mercenaries who fight for money in masks …

So when I talked with Alex Hutchinson, creative director, and Reid Schneider, executive producer, I was happy to find out that the sequel Army of Two: The 40th Day was taking a different direction.
EA Montreal is going less with the diamond-encrusted guns and super silliness and moving toward more grittiness and realism. “It’s going to be a lot more believable, a lot more credible,” Schneider said. But the team wants to retain the humor of the previous game.

But it’s all about the right kind of laughs. Hutchinson and Schneider both talked about the Steven Seagal test when it came to adding lines to the sequel. It goes like this: If they can hear the Marked for Death star saying it, the line goes out. On the other hand, if it could conceivably be voiced by John McClane of Die Hard fame, then the line would go in.

If it works out, the new tone will be a welcome change. The 40th Day’s more mature story takes place in Shanghai. Rios and Salem find themselves as small fries in the middle of a battle between two large, unknown forces. In this scenario, the muscles of Trans World Operations have to escape a city that’s crumbling from a military bombardment.

The story definitely sounds darker and there’s even a disaster element to it. Schneider says the game was partly inspired by scenes of destruction inCloverfield. But the bigger change fans will notice is in the deeper gameplay.

With The 40th Day, the team at EA Montreal wanted a more fluid, more organic co-op experience. They didn’t want to create a game where there was a co-op movement, some gunfights, more co-op movements. Schneider says the team wanted to create something more natural.

“What we wanted to do is put these characters in a world that’s in collapse and tell a story that’s not about saving the world, but saving yourself,” Hutchinson said.

To do that, they’ve improved your partner AI. EA Montreal wants to make you feel as if the computer-controlled partner is alive. The second thing the team added is a co-op playbook. Rios and Salem have plans that they can use to take hostages or fool enemies.

One plan is to pretend to surrender to distract soldiers. It’ll draw foes’ attention and let your partner sneak up and take an officer hostage. With an officer hostage, they could order underlings to give up and do other things.

Sadly, this won’t work on grunts. An officer won’t care about a private. If you take a grunt hostage, the officer will just shoot them and you’ll end up with a nice meat shield.

One of my bigger complaints in the previous Army of Two was that Rios and Salem felt tethered together. Playing you never felt as if one could leave the other. You and your partner were tied closely by some invisible rubber band.

EA Montreal seems to have learned from this, and they now separate the two through catastrophic events in the environment. For example, while exploring a building, Rios and Salem will see a warship off shore blasting at a building — their building. The explosions separate the two and one person will have to take care of the other while they’re under siege from soldiers.

As for other gameplay wrinkles, EA Montreal is adding side missions where you can haggle with clients for an assassination. Depending on how you play Rios and Salem, you could do a hit for a high price or do it for free.

Lastly, Hutchinson and Schneider showed off a set piece where morality comes into play in The 40th Day. Militiamen are holding innocent people hostage, and it’s up to Rios and Salem to determine how they’ll handle things. They can be stealthy (They no longer just kick down doors.) and eliminate the hostage-takers. They can be the good guys.
Or they can go in guns ablazing and probably get everyone killed. Of course, there’s minor rewards for doing the right thing, Hutchinson said. You may get more money for upgrades and such, but it seems as if the team is doing something more than you normally experience in shooters.

From what I’ve seen, the game looks better than its predecessor and I like the direction the studio is taking the game. EA Montreal will announce more details later in the year, with a big reveal at E3. But the game itself won’t likely see the light of day until next winter and that’s a long time to wait.

With Army of Two: The 40th Day, EA Montreal seems to have heard its critics and is working to fix the flaws of the first game.

Gieson Cacho

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i loved the first game, but it wasnt without its flaws. my best friend and i still play the first game today like its still new. one thing we would both like to see is the ability to customise your armour. I see that both players are wearing different types of MOLLE vests and we both agree that to modify your upperbody to carry more or less pouches which could then affect how much additional ammo you could carry

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